Writing a blog about Coronavirus, I confess to feeling slightly odd that I am not reporting from the frontline of the NHS. As a medically trained Public Health consultant, my name is down on the reserve list to get back in to scrubs if more resources are required. However, I am also incredibly aware that the job I am doing in my shed cum office at the bottom of the garden, is providing Public Health support in a way that I could only hope might be possible when I was an over enthusiastic Public Health registrar.
I work for a company who are pioneers in providing health and insurance services to millions of people living in emerging markets. People who have previously been excluded from traditional health insurance models and who lack access to decent healthcare. The company has developed simple, affordable mobile delivered health insurance for people in developing countries, where there is often little or no public health system. And the reason that I work in my garden shed for them is because they also provide a mobile Health service (mHealth) – teledoctors and digital public health programmes – to millions of people across the Globe. My role is to design and write tailored and relevant health programmes, and to work with the technical brains of the company to get them out to as many people as possible, across as many digital channels as people are able to access.
As I write, Coronavirus cases are increasing in many of the countries where we work, with particular cause for concern in Bangladesh and Pakistan. From a teledoctor perspective, we have increased capacity and are braced for high demand for these services, not least because people are unable or unwilling to utilise their local clinic for non-coronavirus health issues. In Pakistan, we are partnering directly with the Government to bolster their health service offer. For our health programmes, we are running as fast as we can to get information out on prevention, local guidelines, dealing with symptoms, mental and physical wellbeing, with some myth busting thrown in for good measure. I have to write an easily understandable, actionable message in 160 characters or less to fit the parameters of our SMS allowance (never have words seemed so valuable or so long!). Cultural context must be accounted for and the fact that my English version will be translated by our local teams in to languages such as Bengali, Urdu and Twi, before being sent out to millions of people who do not have an NHS equivalent, and who have limited reliable sources of information beyond this SMS delivered to their mobile phone.
Coronavirus has also been the catalyst for putting out our health messages to people who do not have insurance in the countries where we work. Through websites, apps, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, these evidence based health messages are translated into visual images that allow people with smartphones the opportunity to gather reliable knowledge as to how we can all effectively fight this pandemic.
In the UK, I think that we are still wary of digital health. We have heard about virtual doctor surgeries and the concerns that they are not as effective as in person consultations. I think that as we become more comfortable with technology, these concerns will diminish. This global pandemic is in a way aiding this adoption process. In the Countries where this mHealth service is working, we are already filling a gap where the number of doctors per head of population is simply not compatible with offering everyone who needs it an in-person consultation, particularly in the face of a global pandemic. Furthermore, providing accurate, personalised, health information to millions of people through their mobile phones has the potential to revolutionise our approach to ensuring population health. For coronavirus, these messages are designed to encourage people to keep safe and well by following the best guidelines, based on the best evidence that we have.
If I am called back to the NHS frontline, of course I will go. But whilst I am in my shed, if our work is able to alleviate even a small amount of the stress on overstretched health systems around the world in the coming months, I am very grateful and proud to have had the opportunity to contribute to such an essential endeavour.